What might happen if an English professor, a powerful voice in modern poetry and creative nonfiction, conspired with her daughter, a visual artist and young mother, to articulate desire? The dialogue that ensues, in the words of Faith Wilding, “is an opening into fearsome and sublime territories, where home comforts and home truths are scarce; where ancient hierarchies and silences have been broken.”

2. Don’t wait for someone else to give you permission to take yourself seriously as an artist. The first task is to invent yourself as an artist— paint a self portrait, even if you have to repaint it every six months.